


Faceless

by serranodebergerac



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Death and the Maiden, F/M, maddening verbal foreplay, only tiny bit of suggestive material at the very end, unfortunately sfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16167806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serranodebergerac/pseuds/serranodebergerac
Summary: A brothel-keep is visited by a mysterious customer.





	Faceless

The day the red man arrived, the air was heavy with summer.

Golden light splashed on the walls, and the air was redolent with the smell of warm fruit and sweat. She could hear the cry of peacocks from the yard below her windows. The long curtains, gauze-pale and green, blew in a gentle breeze. She dotted a final ‘i’ on the account ledger on her desk, before crossing the room to answer the knock at her door.

She had infrequent appointments with men; it was no longer her job to entertain them, only to keep watch over the girls who did. She had been expecting him.

He was dressed like one of the bravos that prowled the cobblestones and canals, with gathered sleeves and a dark, slashed doublet. The sound of his boots as he entered her wide room was steady, unhasty for one with only an hour bought. The sunlight stabbed through gaps in the curtains, gathering in his hair like burning embers, and her mouth quirked up at the dashing streak of white running through the red.

It was when he bowed to her, kissing her hand with well-bred propriety, that she noticed he didn’t carry a sword.

“I am your servant, sweet lady,” he spoke. His voice was deep. Serene, with a mysterious lilt of incense smoke. He stood and rested his right hand against his heart.

She grinned, amused. “You’ve parted with quite a sum,” she said, “to only be my servant.”

“With such a beautiful mistress, I would want nothing more.”

Her laughter barked out, full of pure, unflattered joy. Her eyes grasped his, arched with laughter. His eyes were like cloud on water, clear, cool, and filled with secrets.

“Welcome,” she said, and offered him the chair while she prepared tea behind the ancient desk.

Her back was to him. Her dress was surprisingly modest, he thought, conceding that he knew nothing about whores, or madams, for that matter. She wore a deep blue dressing-gown tied in front, though one of the sleeves kept slipping down her left shoulder. Purchasing her time had been easy enough, though he had been warned that with her, he would not be entirely free to do as he wanted. He had feigned annoyance then; though in truth, it wasn’t the wares of the brothel that had brought him here.

She seemed at ease with him there, as though serving an old friend. He fingered the dagger at his hip. There was time, he reassured himself. He looked over at the cups she had laid out on a tray on the low table. They were plain, terracotta clay. He contemplated the bottle at his other hip.

There was time.

“Your voice is far too lovely for you to say so little,” she remarked, unconcerned, merely commenting. “Though I admit, I’ve forgotten how men behave when they have interests outside those of the brothel.”

She carried over an old pot, wide and short, made of similar red clay. He decided to take his place in the chair, facing her.

“My Lady does not take lovers often, then?” he asked. He watched her expressions, searching for points of weakness. She seemed to show only calm contentedness. She was beautiful, he thought. Her skin was dark, the dusky brown of sepia ink. Her lips were the deep shade of dried roses. Her eyes, shocking him through their fringes of midnight lashes, were the green of cut emeralds.

“I did, once,” she laughed, but it concealed something beneath it. “Now I have lost the taste for it. My time is usually not for sale, and when it is, I still demand it stay as my own. Most men find this unsavory advertisement.”

“And what do these men do, who try to claim your time as their rightful purchase?”

She laughed again, scattering lightness. “Oh, they always leave. Often demanding I return their coin. I do; it makes no difference to me. The madam of a brothel is merely curiosity, not merchandise.”

“Then why entertain them at all?” he asked. She had a gift, he thought. Her smile masked answers until the moment she chose to give them.

“My profession is a lonely one,” she admitted. “At times I wonder if someone may simply wish for my company.” She paused. “Don’t you?” The light concealed any motivation from her eyes.

“A bravo has many friends,” he explained, “and never wants for women.”

She reached for the first cup, her lips untouched by the thought darting through her eyes. “You are no bravo,” she said, like the stab of a blade. She looked up to meet his eyes.

“Perhaps merely a forgetful one,” he played hastily. “Or one who thought a sword would be unwelcome in a lady’s chamber.”

“Which is it, then?” she mused. Her hair was unstyled, unadorned, rolling over her shoulders with the abandon of one fresh from sleep. But her eyes were sharp and awake. “A swordsman with no sword buys the time of a woman who does not sell it. It sounds like a riddle,” she proposed, her tone innocent.

She turned to look down at the cup as she poured the tea. Steam rose like ghosts from a single clay cup. A moment hung in the air, her hand poised on the lid of the teapot.

Cool as the breezes off the evening sea, she said, “You’re one of them, then. One of the Faceless Men.”

His body tensed. He could feel the long stiletto at his hip burning to be drawn, willing him to make this her last breath. He eased upward, his hand moving.

She began pouring the second cup of tea. He froze.

“I didn’t think anyone would waste such money to be rid of me,” she mused, and a smile played over her dark lips. “I suppose I should be honored.” She looked up into his eyes then, still smiling. He was perplexed by the lack of bitterness, the lack of panic in her eyes.

She offered him the steaming cup, and he took it, more out of confusion than thirst. She sat in her chair, pulling her legs up to cross on the pillow. She wafted the teacup beneath her nose while judging the air between them.

“So tell me,” she asked, her eyes clear and eloquent as stained glass. “Have you found yet how you will kill me?”

Though clever, she was naive, he thought. Naive of the craft of killing. But she knew. She knew and was unafraid. He saw no harm in candor. Perhaps it would not hurt to play easy in her last hour.

“The question is not ‘how’, lovely Lady. ‘How’ is any way, and all are simple to me.” The heat from the teacup reached through the clay and scorched against his fingers. He adjusted his hand to cup it in his palm. “The real question you should ask me is ‘when.’”

To his surprise, her smile broadened. “If I knew that, I fear it would take all the joy out of your company,” she replied.

The corner of his mouth lifted. He felt a surprising fondness beginning to grow.

She set her cup on the small table beside her chair, then stared at it a moment. “In the pouch at your right is a glass bottle with a cork stopper,” she announced. His eyes never wandered from her face, and his smile did not dim. “I have turned my back on you, even for such short time.” She grinned. “You could have poured it into my drink a dozen times.”

She lifted the teacup again in her hand, and her eyes shot toward him like bolts. She lifted it to her lips and drank.

“My Lady does not fear death,” he said simply.

She replaced the cup. A moment beat by like a surge of blood, and outside, a peacock cried distantly. Then, “If death has come with such gentleness as you have shown, what is there for me to fear?”

The smile did drip from his face at that. What was this he felt? Rancor. At being called gentle, when he was no such thing.

She watched his change of expression with smooth impassivity. “So,” she began, willing the mood to lighten. “What is to be gained from my death? My middling accounts? Possession of the girls who work for me? Vengeance?” Her eyes unfocused. “Or simple hatred?” She tasted the words, as though testing them for poison. The corner of her mouth stretched bitterly as she found it.

He answered automatically. “A Faceless Man does not ask what or why. Only whom, and he obeys.”

“How dreadful,” she laughed. “But whom is it, then, that you obey? If you grant death on the whim of any fool with the coin, that is hardly the will of any god.”

The answer had been beaten into his bones. “Death comes to all, my lady. It is only the hour we can change, for those willing to pay.”

He was already beginning to know the face she made. The face when she had no answers, as though she were reliving a happy memory with a sad ending.

“Then I know the god you serve,” she responded, “and his name is not Death, but Money. He is a god I hardly expected to appeal to your tastes.”

Something stung at that. As though she knew him.

“And what are my tastes, my lady?”

“Ahh,” she sighed, leaning forward. “If only we had time. I would feed them to you one by one, and with great pleasure.” She rose from the chair, and went to open the curtains. He watched her move with odd familiarity, uncaring that the sleeve of her dressing gown had fallen again, revealing a curve of flesh in the light of sunset. She paused, looking out.

Something odd, then, happened. A slender thread of scent went by, and he smelled hyacinths, mixed with pine. Neither of those plants would grow in the city, and his mind churned, trying to explain it. Was it real, or a memory? And which provenance was most troubling – the smell that picked the lock of memory, or the memory that came unbidden?

“Who are you?” she asked suddenly, her eyes lambent as candleflame. He started as though waking from a dream, one embroidered with disconnected images: a patch of unmelted snow lying beneath a row of conifers. The sound of feet padding against the earth, and the calling of happy voices –

He brought the teacup hastily to his lips, drinking to wash his mind clean.

“I was once of the Free City of Lorath,” he began. “I came to Braavos from –”

“No,” she laughed lightly. “I mean – who are you beneath the face? Beneath No One?” She curled in her chair, almost playful. Childlike. “You would not begrudge a dead woman the truth, would you?”

Naive, naive, he thought. But he smelled again the memory of hyacinths, and something stirred, as though beneath deep waters.

She watched his expressions shift with curiosity, gentleness. “Perhaps a simpler question,” she amended. “What made you choose it? What makes a man choose to forget himself?”

“My lady, you are trying to toy with me.”

“I’m only curious,” she responded. “I have no hope of changing my fate. I cannot outrun or outfight you. My life is undoubtedly yours, but my last hours I hoped to savor. With you.”

The corner of his mouth quirked downward. “I chose –” he began. Memories, true memories, surfaced through the stillness. In this moment, he felt he could uncover the truth to her. Death had taken the truth before, when he pledged his life to it. Soon death, her death, would take those memories again, he thought, his thumb rolling on the dagger hilt. So it would all be fair.

“I chose–” he tried again, then corrected. “I did not choose. I served. Death entered early into my life. When death had taken everything else from me, I saw no choice but to let him become my master.”

Silence muffled the air. “I am sorry,” she said. She thought a moment, gathering words. “I also know the bitter taste when death embraces those you love and leaves you untouched.”

He looked up from his thoughts then to see her. She was not so young, he realized. There were cobweb-creases at the corners of her eyes, gentle laugh lines hugging her lips. He picked out several strands of grey through her dark hair. His brow creased with something akin to pain. Could he recall how old he was? No longer so young, either, though choices had aged him as much as time.

“So they do not take them,” she mused, smiling again.

“Who? Take what?”

“The Faceless Men. They do not take your memories.”

“No,” he replied. He ran his thumb absently over the warm lip of clay on his teacup, watched the light make shapes, black and white, as it swirled on the tea’s surface. “We are meant to forget them, and we are broken until we do.”

She shifted in the chair. Her movements were cautious. Her words pierced him with the skill of his stiletto blade.

“Then it is a lie,” she said.

His eyes lifted to hers, burning.

“Eloquently crafted, but still a lie. A man may choose to play No One, but he only plays. No One is just another face he wears. Underneath, the memories endure.”

His eyes focused on her. He placed the teacup on the small table. Then he stood, precise and dangerous, and looked down at her stoic face, curtained with hair.

“You are testing the man who would murder you. What makes you think that is wise?”

She stuck out her chin. “You anger helps unearth your humanity. Though he may be forgotten, beneath the face, there is still a man.” She gulped, stepping out of her chair. “You told me that death is certain. This I know well. But I would rather it came to me at the hands of a man than of money. Or of any god,” she added. Her bare feet tested the ground, drawing closer. “At least the first, I can understand.”

The smell of pine trees returned, hardly a whisper, and more sensation begging to be remembered – a field of wheat. The embrace of his father. The bouquet of hyacinths he brought his mother –

He looked down at the woman. She planted her feet, her chin level to the floor. Her eyes were set, like an empress riding to a battle she knew she would lose. Without dropping her gaze, she reached forward, gently took his large hand in hers.

He knew the words he had been taught;  _Only death may pay for life._   Another thought suddenly cut through them: _But d_ _e_ _ath was such poor coin with which to purchase it_.

He stepped forward. She inhaled deeply, with finality. The low rays of the sun grasped at her eyes.

“At last, we have arrived at the answer,” she said with a serene smile. “To the question you told me to ask. Now I know when.”

He said nothing, but needles were pricking the insides of his veins.

“It seems such a long time,” she said, her face relaxing. “I’ve suspected I would no longer find peace in anyone’s embrace. But do you think I can find it instead in No One’s?” Her tone was playful, bordering on reckless.

He breathed, bewildered. His hand gripped around hers.

“You look me in the eyes, and you know me,” he said. “You look into the eyes of death, and instead of fearing him, you aim to persuade him to fall in love with you.”

“And do I succeed?” she asked, prompting him to write the end to her story.

He was silent for a moment. His brows creased, and hers responded; he asking himself, she curious.

He took her other hand, held them both. She felt his pulse hammer through his palm. A thought fled across her mind as he led her over to the bed. How was it possible, to manufacture a rapid pulse?

His scent caught her as he moved. Spices, but not perfume. The fragrant buds of foreign trees and deep, secret roots. And over it, her tea leaves.

She felt small, looking up at him. The dying sun gilded the red in his hair, sparked against the white. It netted light oddly in his eyes. They were of such a clear silver-grey, they disarmed her with their honesty.

His hands were warm. He rolled the pad of his thumb against the bones of her wrist, unhurried, unobtrusive. Questioning.

She raised a hand to the laces at the collar of his shirt. Felt the hot beat within his throat. He gave her the face she had come to know, the one with smiling eyes crowded with secrets. Then he offered her a new face.

“Take me then,” she whispered, meeting his look with surety, seeking to ease what she saw. Her hand traced the last kiss of sunlight along the prickle of beard at his jaw. “I would choose no other to give me this gift than you.”

His mouth met hers with sudden alacrity.

Undoing the knot, she spread the laces at his breast, standing on her toes to trace the hollow of his throat with the tips of her fingers. She ran her hands down to his wide belt. She tugged the shirt fabric upward, over, and it floated like a ghost to the floor.

His skin burned. With words, he had been cautious, but he pulled her now against him with alarming ferocity. There was a song of metal rushing against leather, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, he drew her down onto his lap. Through the cloth of her skirt bunched between them, she felt something hard.

Bird wings fluttered against the window. She heard something clatter to the floor.

As he slid deep into her, she was shocked at the cry that broke from her mouth. She gripped his hair; fire, with a river of snow. He made a low sound as he bit her lower lip. Her heart quickened at the look on his face, and she smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> This is... _barely_ fanfiction. You could probably go into this not knowing a thing about ASOIAF and be fine. I went into it trying to write something smutty and indulgent and I FAILED, I'M SORRY. But I really liked the result anyway. I was trying a "minimalist" style -- where the dialogue intentionally kept true meaning buried between the lines. I think I succeeded.
> 
> So, because it's the only thing remotely fanfiction that I've ever written, I thought I'd christen my new AO3 account with it! Hope you enjoyed it.


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